Envato Elements is Envato Elements. Envato Market is Envato Market. The two are totally differnent in pricing concepts and customer basis. Elements authors will most certainly reject this idea even more, based on the fact that they already earn based on the subscription model. Plus, Envato has costs to cover, costs that must covered by taxes. This would end up in a major headache for invoicing and so on and so forth… Logistically this would be a nightmare.
Updated my post ^^^ it sort of answers your answer
As for this, as l’ve explained:
- It’s voluntary
- Author has the prices they like
Why would half the market leave when they get sales for a price they’d be happy selling at?
Envato have already done this by allowing ADP & $5 items, are you saying authors have set items to $5 and then run off in fright? If authors have left in droves, well l am sorry but that is not implicit in anything l’m proposing =)
Nor am l saying sell a $25k theme for $10 (l hope somebody out there understands this?!). Reductio ad absurdam.
I’m still trying to picture authors setting items to at least, say, $5 (or $10, or $100, choose your own adventure, l’m not going to tell you!) and then running away from a sale at that price. I’m confused by this and feel it is another Reductio ad absurdam.
I hope over time, somebody with a genuine interest in my ideas and suggestions comes along and picks up from where l have left off. I guess you’d need a pilot study first (to gauge the interest, and therefore see if it’s worth having an outlying office in LA, i think you’re allowed to by an Uzi 9mm over there so i imagine you’d get many volunteers, mostly women in bikinis, they have a beach over there right?)
(Also the pilot study can give early warning if sellers are going to voluntary charge $X amount, then flee in droves when they get sales @ precisely $X amount - which is exactly what was being forecast as a likely outcome!).
I think l have answered all objections. Thank you and long live Envato - and somebody please read this with a clear mind!
Yeah. As I said before, my opinion still stands. If this happens, every author here will leave in a heartbeat. We’re here to make customers happy and make a living.
A US author paying 2000$ rent won’t really care about selling this products at 10% of their respective US value. That won’t pay the rent, that won’t pay the bills.
You can’t sustain yourself by leaking money. If your top buying country is a low GDP one that means you’re out of business.
Envato is a free / open market, where this concept will never work.
These are digital goods.
In any case, in a utopian world this would work, if we as authors would be a company the size of Apple, then yes, it would work, but as individuals, in this world, as authors, this can only lead to the end of Envato.
I am talking about extending ADP to have a country axis i.e. ADP by country. As such, it is all voluntary.
Here is an example of what l mean:
-
Author gets a respectable 10 sales a month totalling a mean average of $200 per month take home.
-
Author then wonders if his Shamanistic Throat Song would enjoy a spike in sales on Sky deity Tengri’s feast day, say 25 December.
-
Author sets price to be $8 cheaper for Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan & China, where Altaic nomads may roam.
-
Author manually toggles this preferential rate on, on 21 Nov, & flicks it back off on 26 Dec. No more discount from 26 Dec onward.
-
Author sees 5 extra sales in that period that would likely never have existed according to his past experience.
-
Hero Author therefore earns $100 for flicking a switch at an opportune time. Green Mile eat your heart out.
Another example:
- Author makes a Hindu Diwali festival song, priced at a respectable $30
- Author gets 5 sales per month worldwide
- Author assigns a rate table based on spending power per country, so that it ranges from $5 cost in Mali (pretend Mali has lowest spending power quotient according to stats for 2018) to $50 in Norway (pretend Norway has highest spending power quotient according to stats for 2018).
- Author then checks the automated results for pricing, country by country. Cost in India for Hindu festival song is $11
- Author thinks this is fair but just for the heck of it, 1 month ahead of the Diwali festival the Author lowers price to $5, and flicks switch to bring it back to $11 on the day after the festival.
- Author picks up 200 sales from India that were non existent when the song was priced at $30 globally.
- Author still managed to get a few sales for $50 in Norway from expats there who are well to do.
Objection: my figures are made up. But can you say this won’t happen? Also, note that this is just an extension of ADP so it has precedent.
Also, Author can change price several times per minute, per second (but will get jailed for DDOS). I cannot understand why the Author would flee screaming from this situation, where the price can be set to automatically vary across the globe and/or manually vary on top of that. Plus Author can just switch it off (and on again) if they don’t like it.
100% Illegal. It’s called price discrimination, and it’s illegal throughout the major countries of the world. Including the EU and Australia. Major buyers of the marketplaces.
Yes, this won’t happen. Beside the fact that authors will leave by the douzines, if the following fact wouldn’t exist, it’s also illegal in a tone of countries including the EU, and no, the EU is not a block, it’s made up of individual countries.
Therefore, an author from the US that’s mainly selling a low GDP country making a respectable earning will NOT agree to do this, but other authors will and will force the hand of the US author, which will in turn have to adapt or die as an author.
Therefore, this would become a cut throat business, where low GDP countries would set ultra low prices for items, voluntarily to increase their sales which would affect sales of higher GDP countries that are selling at normal prices, causing a complete and total unbalance of the market which would leave to it’s doom and a race to the bottom.
Because the hypothetical scenario you’ve mentioned does not exist. Authors here make great sales as is. That’s why Envato Elements exists with a subscription system, you don’t get item support but you get cheaper overall items. If the full price is not for you and you’re a wiz when it comes to support requiring issues.
Also, the prices here are based in US dollars. Which is again a tricky business. There are low GDP countries that have good economic situations where the dollar value is low for conversion so the price of an item here is perfect and decently balanced for their wages, and there are countries where the US dollar is very high compared to their local currency. In which case authors earn much more when converting from dollar to their local currency, in which case those authors would be 100% against this idea to begin with. So, this would annoy and push away both buyers and authors, leaving an endless race to the bottom where quality is no longer the standard but the lowest price is. This in turn would destroy the entire marketplaces.
This system is absolutely perfect. Everyone is happy with it. It’s the last thing anyone wants to see change on the marketplaces.
And even if your idea would be accepted by a tone of folks, as mentioned above, would make most people here run away in a heartbeat, it’s still defined as price discrimination and it’s still illegal.
Not gonna happen mate. Cheers! 
1 Like
While we get you are only trying to put forward an idea - which is a good thing, all some of us are trying to do it to apply clarity.
Without getting into the rights/wrongs of any of these above - if it is a logical idea then it seems odd that none of the numerous other stock marketplaces don’t do it?
Given that the marketplace has tens if not hundreds of thousands of authors and millions of items - to devise a technical setup capable of potentially accounting for individual author or item settings on this scale (this is completely different from a single price as in ADP) would make even a pilot scheme unrealistic.
If you think it is acheivebale then the right people to tlak to is support https://help.market.envato.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
3 Likes